Grovetown resident Charlotte Smith came home to an unexpected surprise in late October one day after a night spent away with her daughter.

Tangled in a tree in the back yard of her Louisville Road home, Smith found three helium balloons, a pink one with a handwritten note that read "We love you sissy!" Another with a smiley face, and one with a purple star, all attached together by a birthday invitation from Louisville, Ky.

Greenbrier High School's fine arts students are taking their season of giving this year to a whole new level.

For the past few months, students in the school's chorus, band and drama classes have been working to produce a Christmas album they are now selling to benefit the Columbia County Foundation for Children's Christmas drive, and chorus students have put fundraising efforts to travel to a performance in Florida in December on hold.

Two interim personnel positions were filled with unanimous approval by the Grovetown City Council during Monday's meeting.

Interim city clerk Roxanne Brown and Director of Public Planning and Development's John Waller were appointed to fulltime positions.

Brown has been serving as interim city clerk since longtime city clerk Vicky Capatillo resigned from her position in August, after being placed on temporary leave in July. Waller, who was initially hired as a zoning enforcement employee stepped in to fill the shoes of former Planning and Zoning Director Frank Neal.

The Columbia County Chamber of Commerce was recently recognized by the Georgia Association of Certified Chamber Executives as a Georgia Certified Chamber.

The Georgia Certified Chamber program, which began in 2011 by the GACCE Board of Directors, aims to facilitate excellence in the chamber industry and to foster a pro-business environment across the State of Georgia. Chambers must meet standards in organization, service intent and capacity, professional administration, financial management, communications, and advocacy in order to achieve the designation.

A code orange air-quality alert has been issued in Columbia, Richmond and Aiken counties.

The alert will remain in effect from midnight Monday through midnight tonight, according to Pam Tucker, the director of Columbia County Emergency Services.

Code orange means children and adults, especially those with respiratory issues, should limit prolonged outdoor exposure. In addition, people should take measures to prevent outdoor air from getting inside.

Volunteers including Joe Mullins of Mullins Management and Entertainment, a company that owns commercial real estate across the Southeast and manages nonprofit events, have helped restore normalcy to the area.

Team Rubicon is on the scene helping in many ways as well. Team Rubicon is a nonprofit organization offering veterans a chance to continue their service by helping and empowering those afflicted by disasters, and also themselves.

Mike Wolfe, Frank Fritz, and their team widely known from the television show American Pickers, plan to film episodes in the region this winter.

According to a news release, American Pickers is a documentary series that explores the world of antique "picking."

The show follows Wolfe and Fritz, widely considered two of the most skilled in the business, as they hunt through barns, backyards and basements for valuable antiques and learn the interesting stories behind them.

A man arrested at a Grovetown motel on charges of human trafficking is suspected of having facilitated prostitution meetups for several groups of females, some as young as 13, in the Augusta area on more than one occasion.

Investigators with both the FBI and the Columbia County sheriff’s office task force responded to an online ad that fit the description of prostitution, potentially with juvenile victims.